….lesson with Helen Wells
Today I listened to both videos but only had time to follow along with one of them. If I have time I will pull out my Geli Plate and make some papers for future collage projects.
Helen Wells was the first guest artist today and she took us through a fun drawing project that was focused mostly on colour. I follow Helen Wells online and have one of her books for inspiration. I’ve done similar assignments before and I always find them very meditative and relaxing.
….I’m not committing to doing the art each day but today’s lessons intrigued me and helped me warm up for my next painting
Today’s lessons were both focused on creating art around a blob of colour. Koosje Koene gave the first lesson using watercolour and Mike Lowery used markers. Both were fun to do and got me ready to paint on my next painting for my solo show in May.
….day 4 of Sketchbook Revival with Tamara Laporte
In one of today’s Sketchbook Revival classes we meet Tamara Laporte. I’ve watched some of her classes before but I think this is the first time I’ve completed an assignment. It was a lot of fun and I think I may go back to her site and try some more.
This owl was first sketched with pencil and then watercolour was applied. Along the way marker, ink, pencil and acrylic paint pens were used to add detail.
….on day 2 of Sketchbook Revival we meet Leanne Oliver and Sarah Matthews
Leanne walked us through an exercise she calls Cracks in the Road. She loves to make marks in her paintings and she finds that this process helps her with her art. The steps involved wetting some watercolour paper and adding a little bit of neutral acrylic paint over part of the surface. Then she took a charcoal pencil and drew lines from a photograph of cracks in the road. Then she wet the lines so that the charcoal would bleed out a bit. After that she took Gesso and applied a coat over some of the areas and while it was still wet she went over the lines again but this time with pencil. Then she added some colour using a soluble coloured pencil or pastels and more water.
The whole process was a lot of fun and I can see how I might use this technique in my next painting. Here are the two samples that I did.
Sarah Matthews is a print maker and she makes her own stamps. I thought I had a block of material to carve into but I’ve either used it or couldn’t find it. I’m hoping to order some more so that I can try her art lesson at a later date. Stay tuned for that one.
…yesterday I started the Sketchbook Revival lessons
The first lesson is with Danny Gregory who is the founder of Sketchbook Skool. He had us find an interesting shoe to draw and we had to gather up a variety of drawing tools, like markers, pencils, crayons, pastels, watercolour, etc.. Then he timed us as we were drawing our shoes and we had to change our drawing implements about every 30 seconds. It was actually a lot of fun. Here is my finished piece.
Our second teacher yesterday was Carla Sonheim. I’ve taken dozens of classes with her and love her style. Her lesson was based on one-liner drawings where you quickly draw and object with lifting your pen off the paper. We had to draw cats, flowers in a vase, an elephant and a toilet.
Then we had to pick our favourite drawing and create a new drawing but this time we didn’t have to make it all in one line. She also encouraged us to use bits of paper to collage into our books and draw one of our characters around the paper. Here are some of my cats and my elephant.
We were also encouraged to add some colour to our final characters.
…I haven’t posted any art for awhile
I haven’t worked on any large pieces lately. My focus has been mainly on drawing in my sketchbook. I signed up for two classes. One was with Lewis Rossignol called
Sketchbooking and the other is a two week class with Karen Abend called Sketchbook Revival. The latter is a free set of classes with 27 artists that each give a lesson that takes about 30 minutes. Sketchbook Revival is free and you can still sign up. https://www.karenabend.com/sketchbook-revival-2021/
Lewis’s focus is on being loose and not too precious with your sketchbooks. In fact he encourages you to mess up your pages a bit so that it is easier to start drawing. He likes to work in ink, pen, and pencil and he uses collage to add interest and balance.
Here are a few of the sketches that I did after watching his lessons.
I will post my art from Day 1 of Sketchbook Revival in a post tomorrow.
…thanks to Noah Scalin for this art activity
On day 8 Karen Abend featured Noah Scalin who showed us how to open up when you don’t know what to draw or paint. 100 dots is literally an activity where you randomly place 100 dots on a piece of paper and then you look for dots to connect to create a picture. I decided to look for a face. Here is my creation.
…thanks to Karen Abend for hosting these wonderful free on-line classes
I haven’t done all the classes but there are so many to choose from. On Day 7 the featured artist Juliette Meeks and she gave a lesson on painting and drawing with watercolour. Our subject was a bunch of flowers. I normally sketch out my paintings first with ink and then paint the colour in but Juliette had us go straight to the watercolour and created our shapes without the aid of pencil or pen. I enjoyed the process but need to practise more.
….day 2 of Sketchbook Revival
Today in Karen Abend’s Sketchbook Revival class we were introduced to Mary Beth Shaw who is a journal artist. She took us from a doodle sketch done in pencil to an abstract spread using collage, ink and acrylic paint. It was a fun process and a great way to start a painting when you have no idea what you want to paint. Here is my day’s artistic endeavour.
…yesterday I showed you two blobs of colour that I would transformÂ
Today I completed a cat that looks like it was crossed with a mouse and a leaf eating dragon. Here’s what I started with…..
….and this is what I ended up with
Mama Cormier 